


The Golden Mile

by ElDiablito_SF



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Hotels, M/M, Miscommunication, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 08:37:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14328678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/pseuds/ElDiablito_SF
Summary: Two years ago, John Silver disappeared out of Flint's life.  Now, he's sitting at the bar at the Marriott on the Golden Mile, and Flint is having an aneurysm.





	The Golden Mile

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ellel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellel/gifts).



> This actually started out as a Tumblr prompt and then spun out of control because I was writing on the airplane, as I do. :D Thank you, Elle, for your kissing prompt:
> 
> a hoarse whisper “kiss me”

If this had been anyone else’s life but his own, Flint would have attributed it to a coincidence, a mere happenstance, a collision of particles in the ether. He was, after all, at the Marriott on the Golden Mile of downtown Chicago, a place where thousands of people came and went on a daily basis from all over the world. It was the kind of place where you would expect to have any kind of encounter, hear any type of opinion, see all kinds of fuckbaggery that people get up to when they think no one is looking.

He’d been clenching his jaw so hard that pain began to radiate into his ears, snapping him out of the mounting fury that temporarily occluded anything but his reptilian brain. But, in his defense, what the fuck was John Silver, of all people, doing sitting at the round bar in the dimly lit lobby? The same John Silver whom he’d been happily dating (or so he thought in his delusional state at the time), when he'd disappeared from his life in the blink of an eye without even so much as a “fuck you, James.” 

“Ghosting” was what the kids had called it, at least according to Miranda, who had spent the following six month listening to him rant and rave about Silver while she refilled his drinks with quiet resolve and infinite patience. She’d seen him through other disastrous endings, she’d see him through this too. She must have thought that, anyways, as she’d pushed eggs and toast in front of his swollen face in the morning. He had not deserved her.

He had not done anything to warrant being treated that way, as far as he could tell, which only made the mysterious ghosting more painful. Sure, they’d entered that stage of the relationship where Flint was finally beginning to let his less desirable qualities show. The bouts of anger, for example, although never directed at Silver, who, if anything, had seemed turned on by those few occasions when Flint had demonstrated what could generously be called as protectiveness. They were getting comfortable with each other. They were happy, Flint had firmly believed that. 

On the morning that Silver had disappeared, they’d slept in late together. Silver had forgotten to set his alarm and Flint usually woke up with the rays of the sun penetrating his room. San Francisco had been unusually overcast (even for itself) that morning, with Karl the Fog blanketing his house in Diamond Heights like an impenetrable shroud. Silver had left in a flurry of cuss words and hurried kisses, bemoaning his inevitable fate of getting fired for this incident of gross tardiness, while Flint tried to shove a hardboiled egg down his throat and poured him a to-go cup of home-brewed coffee. Silver had left his scarf behind. At some point down the line, Flint burned it in a bonfire at Ocean Beach.

That was two years ago and Flint wished he could say that he hadn’t thought about Silver in months. In fact, he did say that to Miranda, on the occasions his best friend was careful to bring him up (but usually in the context of when would Flint get out there and date again). He was generally lying. You don’t just stop thinking about someone who disappeared from your life without a word, without a sign, for no detectable reason at all. There had been particularly dark nights when Flint hoped Silver had been dead; it was somehow a more comforting thought than the alternative.

He’d obviously been very wrong, at least in that line of thinking. Because John Silver was very much alive and sitting five paces away from him, chatting up the young, female bartender at the Marriott.

Flint sighed and forced himself to unclench his fists. His blood was pounding through his body with such force, he thought there was a good chance he might have been having a heart attack and a stroke at the same time. He was certainly unable to feel at least half of his body and his vision kept blurring out, as if some asshole magician had been drawing a curtain over his eyes. Then - hocus pocus - a poodle appeared from one's past!

This was supposed to have been an easy trip, a distraction from the depressing drudgery of his day-to-day life. He was an invited speaker at the local digital health conference. Two days of networking and another day of sightseeing and that’s it. No stress, no drama.

_What the fuck._

Flint took a few steadying breaths, before he walked right up to the bar and took a seat next to Silver. When the bartender turned to him inquiring about his order, he’d requested a Manhattan with his entire heart in his throat, his nails dragging against the polished bar counter. 

Next to him, Silver’s voice (oh god, Flint _hated_ how familiar it sounded, like an old lullaby) was a silky purr. “Used to be a vodka guy, if memory serves.”

Flint let out a bitter chuckle, his mind shot through with a thousand arrows of bitterness. His quiver of spiteful retorts was overflowing. It was only a matter of picking the arrow that would wound most.

“You look great for a dead man,” Flint replied, managing to bank down the bile that swelled in his soul. He cast a furtive look to the right, where Silver’s intense blue eyes (damn them to Hell!) were looking at him with something too close to wistfulness. 

“You always look fantastic,” Silver replied, a pleading note creeping into his butterscotch mellowness of his voice.

Flint’s fingers wrapped around the glass that the bartender placed before him over a small napkin with the hotel’s logo on it. One perfectly square cube of ice floated in a sea of amber. The entire experience felt like a dream. Perhaps he’d fallen asleep in his suite upstairs and he wasn’t down here at all, having this bizarre reunion with the man who broke his heart.

“I’d forgotten what a flatterer you were,” Flint replied, having taken a fortifying sip. “Which is odd, because I’d spent the past two years cataloguing all your worst qualities.”

“James…”

“Don’t.”

He wasn’t ready for whatever it was Silver was going to say to him. He wasn’t dead, which meant that anything else would be platitudes and excuses.

“I know that…” Silver began to speak, his wide hands and long fingers toying nervously with his beer and the coaster. “You must be… I probably don’t deserve for you to allow me the opportunity of explanation…”

“What the fuck are you even doing here?” Flint interrupted.

“Your name was on the published agenda,” Silver said quietly. 

His hair had gotten significantly longer, Flint was noticing, struggling against the desire to pass his fingers through the tendrils of those ridiculously cascading curls. If he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine how they’d feel wrapped around his digits. And if he tried a bit harder, he could even summon the moan that would escape Silver’s throat if he were to pull on that wild mane the way he knew in his bones Silver had loved.

At last, Flint took another swallow of his Manhattan and spoke again. “You know where I live. I never moved. You know where I work. You know which bars I frequent _at home_. If you wanted to see me…”

“I’ve been living in St. Louis,” Silver replied and tucked a long tendril of his hair behind his ear. As if that explained everything. Flint shook his head and downed the rest of his drink. “Can we…” Silver’s voice was uncertain and small. “Could we perhaps go talk someplace more private?”

“You just so much as admitted you’re stalking me, and now you want me to go with you someplace private?” Flint said with a forced chuckle.

Even as the words left his mouth, Flint knew that there was roughly a snowball’s chance in Hell he would not walk away from this bar with Silver. It was only a matter of time and there was really no sense in prolonging the inevitable.

He’d given the bartender his room number for the tab and nodded towards Silver’s beer. “I got this too.”

“You really don’t have to.”

“Shut the fuck up, John.”

The elevator ride to his floor was comically long, with a stop on almost every floor along the way to drop off or pick another undesirable fellow passenger. Flint was mentally congratulating himself, however, for managing to avoid making eye contact with Silver the entire time. That way lay temptation, and beyond it – perdition. The truth was that Flint had been teetering over the precipice in falling headlong into love with Silver two years ago. The truth was that he was still teetering there, as if he’d been frozen in time, held together only by invisible threads of uncertainty.

At last, the elevator had dinged, announcing their arrival and Flint led the way down the corridor in the direction of his room. He fished the room key out of his back pocket, letting it balance precariously between his index and middle finger. _This wasn’t happening._

“James…” And there was Silver’s voice again, that tentative, pleading tone, like some wounded animal. He had no right, he had no fucking _right_ to be the one sounding that way.

Flint turned around and had Silver pinned against the wall in one smooth motion, one arm pressed across his chest, his other hand gripping into the thicket of those curls, pulling until he could see Silver’s prominent Adam’s apple bobbing with each swallow as his exposed throat presented itself to Flint’s ravenous gaze. Flint growled against Silver, pressing him to the wall with his hips.

“For fuck’s sakes, James,” Silver begged in a hoarse whisper, “kiss me.”

And Flint did, with such force that their teeth clanged together and Flint tasted the metallic tang of someone’s blood. He was too far-gone at the moment to know which of them had cut their lip, nor did he particularly care, licking into Silver’s mouth as if he wanted to eat his entire soul. Silver’s moan had been wanton as he presented his lips and throat for Flint’s assault, his fingers grasped at the back of Flint’s jacket, pulling him closer as he thrust his hips forward into the heat that was pooling between their bodies.

Flint was merciless as he sucked and bit Silver’s lips in between deep kisses that threatened to deprive them both of oxygen. Finally, remembering his key card, he’d managed to get the door open, never letting go of Silver’s body, and the two of them had tumbled into the room.

“Why did you leave?” Flint asked, in a voice so broken that a wave of self-hatred rose up in a wicked cocktail with the wave of anger that was always swelling just under the surface. His body still held Silver pressed against the wall, chest to chest, groin to groin, shoved against each other and looking into each other’s eyes with wild desperation.

“I didn’t,” Silver responded, breathlessly. “I didn’t go anywhere. Not at first.” Flint was about to argue, to shove at him harder, maybe even bite that lying mouth of his. But then Silver gave his foot a small kick. 

Well, that didn't feel right.

“What the fuck, John?” he asked, looking down, towards the place where Silver’s left leg was pressed against his right. Silver’s hand slipped from Flint’s back and reached down to pull at the leg of his jeans, just enough to expose the chrome plating beneath the cloth. “What the hell happened to you?” Flint asked as he pulled away, no longer certain of anything.

“I’m so sorry,” Silver said in that voice again, that voice that made Flint feel like he was losing his mind. “I was in such a hurry to get to work that day, I wasn’t watching where I was going. And you know how often pedestrians get run over in our fucking hometown.”

“ _Jesus_ ,” Flint muttered, hands carding through his own hair. “You lost your leg. Why… why didn’t you _tell_ me?”

“I was afraid,” Silver said with a small laugh. “I was afraid you’d leave me. Which,” again he’d chuckled, “I realize was a self-fulfilling prophecy. But I… I had just lost so much, I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you too. Not like that. It… was easier to let you go on my own terms, before…”

Flint really was in the middle of pulling his own hair out. His mouth was open in a mute cry. He wanted to punch this idiot. He wanted to kiss him.

“I’m so sorry, James,” Silver went on. “I was in the hospital for so long and then… when I heard all your messages…”

Flint remembered the messages too. At first, he’d been casual, then concerned, then terrified, and finally infuriated and cruel.

“And I thought it was maybe better that way, that you not know. It was better than having you look at me with such pity…”

“You could have told me,” Flint said with overflowing anguish. “I would have taken care of you!”

“I didn’t _want_ you to take care of me!” Silver shouted with tears in his own voice. “I didn’t want to be your fucking project!”

“So… you just disappeared? Let me worry? Let me _hate_ you?”

“We had only been together for six months, there was no way for me to know how you’d react. If you’d still want me _this way_.”

Flint had walked over to the mini-bar and began to empty its contents into one of the glasses on the counter. “I had loved you so poorly that you thought this of me,” he muttered. “I should have been there. This wasn’t your decision alone to make!”

The mini-bar vodka burned in a comforting way going down his throat. Christ, was he really berating a man who had lost a _limb_ for behaving irrationally? Flint sank to the foot of the bed. He didn’t think he had the wherewithal to actually lie down ever again.

“My sister, Max, had come from St. Louis to take care of me at some point when they were ready to discharge me,” Silver spoke as he walked over to Flint’s side. “I’d gone back with her and have been living at her place ever since… just trying to figure out how to get my life back on track.”

“I called every hospital in the city looking for you,” Flint whispered. He’d called every morgue too, after a while, but now wasn’t the time to bring that up.

“I was unconscious when they brought me in and I didn’t have ID on me.”

“Christ, John!”

“You’re right,” Silver sank down by his side. “I should have given you the chance to fuck this up for the both of us. I didn’t have to do all the fucking up myself. That isn’t how relationships work.” Flint couldn’t help but smile at that. “In my defense, I hadn’t been in what one might call a functional relationship before. I was so used to people wanting something from me, and leaving when I was unable to give it to them. I’m sorry.”

“You lost a _leg_ ,” Flint repeated, his hand reaching out to touch the metal beneath the jeans. “I wouldn’t have left you over a leg.” He looked up at Silver from under his long eyelashes. “Maybe if you’d lost your cock…”

Silver laughed, “Real Prince Charming!”

“Your cock _is_ still intact, isn’t it?”

“It is, you old size queen,” Silver replied, laughing as Flint pulled him into an embrace. “Please forgive me,” he whispered into the softness of Flint’s broad neck, sending shivers up Flint’s spine. “I know it’s been two years,” he continued murmuring as Flint’s hands ran slowly up and down his back. “I have no right to expect you to forgive me, I don’t even know if you’re seeing anyone new…”

“Shut up, you idiot. Do you really think you were that easy to get over?”

Silver’s lips were pressed against his own and Flint sucked down his tongue as if it was another shot of vodka. The words were on the tip of Flint’s tongue. _I’m so fucking in love with you._ Silver was trembling in his arms. Flint was surprised neither one of them had cried yet, all things considered.

“You once told me you had a low threshold for pain,” Flint whispered against Silver’s lips.

“Yeah, well, a lot’s changed since then,” Silver whispered back.

Flint brushed his hair out his face with both hands. He was so lost in those eyes before, he was so powerless against them now. 

“You’re still the most beautiful boy I’ve ever seen,” he admitted. “And if you spend the night with me here,” he added, “I promise to fuck you into the mattress properly when we wake up in the morning.”

“You always did prefer morning sex,” Silver replied with a smile. “Poor, tired, old man.”

What was it about this insane kid that made Flint feel like those two years of anguish never existed? 

“Stay,” Flint said, taking Silver’s hand in his to bring it to his mouth so he could kiss each long finger in turn. “Don’t leave me again, stupid boy.”

“I’m sorry,” Silver repeated as if chipping at marble around his heart.

“I love you,” Flint responded simply.

That’s when Silver fell into his arms like an overly amorous sack of potatoes. “God, I love you so fucking much, James.”

“I missed you,” Flint admitted into the tuft of curls. “Don’t ghost me again. I’m too old say shit like ‘ghost’ when I’m not speaking in the supernatural sense.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking,” Silver purred with contentment against Flint’s chest. “I still have so much to figure out. And then there’s the leg and the pain… every day is an adventure.”

Flint scrambled to his knees, climbing onto the bed and pulling Silver along with himself. “Then let me live the adventure with you,” he whispered against Silver’s temple.

“I really hope this isn’t the Manhattan and the vodka speaking,” Silver muttered, curling into Flint’s side. His hand rested over the swell of Flint’s chest. Flint did not want to live another day without the weight of those hands on him.

“We’ll find out in the morning,” he replied with a small yawn and closed his eyes, allowing the scent of Silver’s warm body to carry him like a friendly wave into the arms of deep sleep.


End file.
